1st edition:  March 2010

The major change that took place during the last decades of the 20th century in social sciences and theory is connected with the displacement of interest from equality to freedom. This displacement reformed their relation with politics and ideology. The basic question set and answered in this book concerns the appearance and diffusion of new theories of action from the 1960s and onwards, and their relation to the ideological patterns that dominate today.

The writer’s research focused on:
The ideals of freedom that took shape in the 1960s
The social reclassifications related to the massification of education
The change of the sociological problematic
New conceptualizations of action
Theoretical construction of new collective actors
Change of explanation that characterizes social sciences
Conceptual change and ideological transformation
 

The research was organized around two basic areas: The first concerned the sociology of social sciences and the second the epistemology of social sciences. The first brings forth the relation between the conceptual change of the most important tensions of social sciences and the social reclassifications that took place in the end of 1950s and onwards. The second shows the relation between their conceptualizations and the basic values of modern society.